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Military ©rder of i\ie Iso^al Ise^ion 



Onifed §fafGS. 



COMMANDEI^Y OF THE DI^TI(ICT OF dOLUBlBIJ\. 



WAR PAPERS. 

70 

TKe 3/tciking of a '^oluateer (Xavalryrriar!.. 

prepared by companion 

First Lieutenant 

JAMES ALBERT CLARK, 

U. S. Volunteers, 

AND 

READ AT THE STATED MEETING OF NOVEMBER 6, 1907. 



1H^ 



C S5 



®It0 iHaktug of a HnUtul^rr (Haualrgman 



The farther we get away from the war, the more certain 
phases of our military experience stand out in perspective to 
the exclusion of other incidents, which at the time we consid- 
ered of greater importance. Thus, places and dates which go 
to the making of regimental histories become obscured in favor 
of the overshadowil^g view — the making of the volunteer cav- 
alryman. 

Three incidents bearing on this line of thought are insistent 
in my recollection, for they show the raw material at the start, 
and culminate in the gratifying assertion of General Sheridan 
after his return from the Franco-Prussian War, that his Cav- 
alry Corps, as he left it in 1865, could whip any equal number 
of cavalry on the face of the earth. 

The first of these three incidents relates to the time when 
General McDowell with 40,000 strong, encompassed Washing- 
ton, endeavoring to organize an army fit to assume the aggres- 
sive. "Bull Run Russell," the correspondent of the London 
Times, asked him one day why he did not send a cavalry 
reconnaissance toward Fairfax Court House to ascertain what 
the enemy might be doing. General McDowell is said to have 
answered that he had not in his whole command an officer of 
experience whom he could send. It is doubtful if General 
McDowell ever said it, but it was believed to be true over the 
country, and the publications, from the more ponderous maga- 
zine article to the most pretentious country weekly editorial, 
did not hesitate to enlarge upon such a state of things. The 
question was put, "Where are the Cavalry officers of the Regu- 



S5 



lars?" And the answer followed, "Gone to their respective 
states, most of them to organize state ' ^)= ; or, doing staff 
duty in different parts of the country wnere experience surely 
was demanded ; or, promoted to generals and eft'ecting at their 
utmost the vast preparations soo'n to become history." 

Then other questions intruded, "Where are the old Sergeants 
of the Regulars that have seen service on the plains ; served in 
the Mexican War, and drilled under the grand names that 
figured in the old First and Second U. S. Cavalry Regiments, 
when 'Bobby Lee' was one of them and many of the brilliant 
names in the great array of both Federal and Confederate 
armies were then officers of the line?" Same answer, "They 
are all scattered as drill-masters in the various states organiz- 
ing the camps and nearly all now wearing shoulder-straps in- 
stead of the orange chevrons." 

The discussion on this state of aft'airs made an indelible 
impression on my mind from the fact that the professors under 
whom I was studying to complete my college course, entered 
into explanations which to them seemed clear, and which to me 
seemed prophetic, because of the nature of our relations; being 
young, I was obliged to accept their dicta as the resultant of 
ponderous thought, and as superior to the common superficial 
reasoning of the plain people. They said, we, as a nation were 
setting in to a period of great trial. Cavalry could not be made 
in a day. Continental Europe with its history from the great 
Roman days to the late Crimean W^ar would attest this. In- 
fantry could be improvised, massed at a call, as, witness the 
"minute-men" of the Revolution, but Cavalry, No ! ! 

The second of the three incidents above referred to occurred 
after I had enlisted as a private in K Company, Seventeenth 
Pennsylvania Cavalry, late in the summer of 1862. After a 
partrial drill at Camp Curtin, supplemented by experience in 



other camps under a West Point graduate, and a former officer 
of the Second U. S. Cavalry, Colonel Josiah H. Kellogg, we 
found ourselves pushxl to the front in December, 1862, the 
regiment being assigned to General Schimelpfenning, com- 
manding a brigade in the Eleventh Corps under General Franz 
Sigel. This was the old order of things, for the Cavalry Corps 
was not organized until early in 1863. 

I was sent one day, as an orderly (yet a private) to General 
Sigel's headquarters with instruction to wait for an answer to 
the dispatch which I carried. The official quarters of the staff 
of General Sigel were in the building so well known at that 
early period of the war as Stafford Court House. I had 
handed in my dispatch and was waiting in the ante-room 
occupied by the guards, when a well-groomed officer wearing 
the rank of captain passed through with an air of some import- 
ance. His dress, which was European rather than American, 
dazzling, and with medals abundant, caught my boyish fancy; 
his deportment was so imperious that I asked one of the 
guards, "Who is that officer?" He gave me the name which 
I have forgotten. Captain von Something, and further added, 
"He is on the staff" of General Sigel and has seen service in 
Europe. He is a graduate of a military school', and at home, 
a nobleman by birth and rank. He is a very smart man." 

Standing as I did in the ante-room, I heard the conversation 
in the room adjoining, which was the office of the staff officer, 
a lieutenant-colonel, to whom my dispatch had been delivered. 
The spectacular military graduate aforesaid strode in with 
haughty deportment, and said, "Colonel, you have sent for 
me." "Yes, Herr Captain, General Sigel wants you to go to 
Dumfries to-night. Reports still come in that Hampton's 
men are crossing the river at different points and continuino- 
their raids." 



It may be well to state here that some ten days prior, General 
Wade Hampton had made a raid in force reaching Occoqu^n, 
only forty miles from Washington, and had captured many 
sutler's wagons and part of a government train on the way to 
the front. 

The captain answered with a rising inflection, "Yes." 

The colonel continued, "How many men do you want?" 

With no hesitation and in rather an abrupt tone, "One hun- 
dred." 

The colonel after a slight pause said, "Captain, you don't 
need a hundred men ; it is simply wearing out horse flesh to 
pull through the mud on such a dark night." 

To my astonishment (for we had already felt the exacting 
discipline of our West Point colonel), this officer, subordinate 
in rank, replied to his superior and in a tone which carried 
defiance, "I will not assume the responsibility of an expedition 
to Dumfries with less than a hundred men." And he carried 
his point. 

My mind naturally reverted to the "Bull Run Russell" epi- 
sode, and the sage reflections of the scholastic professors whom 
I recalled and reflected, "that's the kind of man General Mc- 
Dowell ought to have had." 

Nevertheless, in two weeks time, details more than once 
were made from our regiment, and ten men under a sergeant 
(I being one of the number) were sent out over the same road 
for a similar purpose. 

The third incident dates in 1864 in the Shenandoah A'alley. 
We were part of the grand old Cavalry Corps organized under 
General Stoneman ; had shared with his successor. General " 
Alfred Pleasanton, the glories of our cavalry achievements, 
and now under Sheridan, after following him confronting the 
Army of Northern Virginia, we found ourselves fighting or 
skirmishing somewhere, nearly every day in the valley. 



Two small detachments, one following the other some days 
apart, had been lost in attempting to establish communication 
at a distant point west of Staunton. A third trial was to he 
made to push through. It was the Chief of Staff at Cavalry 
Corps headquarters who asked Captain Bean, Assistant Inspector 
General on the Staff of the First Cavalry Division, whether 
he knew an officer who, might be trusted to make the third 
attempt. Captain Bean, who formerly was of our regiment, 
came to me, I then being adjutant, and stated the case. I told 
him I could name an officer who would undertake it, and he 
would go through if anybody could, and I sent for Second 
Lieutenant James Anglun. Lieutenant Anglun and myself had 
both enlisted as privates in the same company, had been to- 
gether many times on scouting and reconnoitering trips, so I 
knew my man. I was not present at the interview between the 
Chief of Staff and Lieutenant Anglun, but Captain Bean after- 
ward told me the substance, and he said the Chief of Staff 
was more than ordinarily impressed and pleased with the 
young fellow's way of putting things. To cut it short it ran 
about like this: The colonel, after explaining what was re- 
quired, giving distance and somewhat detailed information as 
to route, coupled with suggestive advice, asked, "Do you think 
you can go through ?" 

"Yes, sir," was the prompt answer. 

"How many men do you want?" 

"Five." 

The colonel seemed surprised at this, and said, "Don't you 
think you had better take more men?" 

"No, sir, don't \vant them; they'll be in the way; too many 
men draw fire and pursuit, and when attacked, we'll scatter, 
of course, and then it is harder to rally, and this delays. I 
can manage better with five and I don't know but that I could 
get along well with three." 



8 

And he went with his five men, and he went through, and 
this young cavalryman, not yet twenty-one years of age. was 
an apprentice to a car builder in the Delaware & Lackawanna 
Railroad shops at Scranton, Pa. 

From "Bull Run Russell" in 1861 to Sheridan's Cavalry 
Corps in 1864, the volunteer cavalryman had been made, and 
well made. The college professors might go on as they did 
with us, forcing their pupils to parse every word of Caesar's 
Gallic War and Xenophon's Anabasis, but the volunteer cav- 
alrymen, by growth and development were already made into 
a state which approached perfection, and which challenged 
the admiration of the thinking world. 

The Stuff in the Making. 

But, there is another point of view in considering the making 
of the volunteer cavalryman, the stuff which entered into the 
mass. I dare not hazard a critical summary which might be 
offered for all sections of the country, but will rather confine 
the deductions to the immediate environment whence we 
sprang. 

In answer to Governor Curtin's call for three regiments of 
cavalry as part of that 300,000 called for in 1862, the infantry 
regiments were easily organized, one in this county, one in 
another, and so on ; but for the three cavalry regiments the 
whole state contributed. To make the Sixteenth, Seventeenth 
and Eighteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiments all counties 
were levied upon. It took fourteen counties to make one regi- 
ment of twelve companies, ours (the Seventeenth). One 
company to a county was the procedure, but failing to secure 
the quota in two companies, contingents from two counties 
were spliced on. 

The company in which I enlisted as a private, was from L,uzernc 



County, then the largest, geographically, in the state; now 
divided by the separation of the new county, Lackawanna. It 
would have seemed to be easy in such a large territory 
to enroll one hundred men for a cavalry troop. At the 
county seat, Wilkes-Barre, Colonel Dana had no difificulty 
in raising in the same length of time the One Hundred and 
Forty-third Infantry, but he had earned experience in the 
Mexican War, and was a lawyer of high standing, while we, 
of the "prospective cavalry, were rallying to a captain whose 
chief merit was that he owned the "Black Warrior," the horse 
which had won every race- in northeastern Pennsylvania. It 
is laughable to look back at this grotesque incident, of large 
posters calling for cavalry recruits, one-third of the sheet 
occupied by the big wood cut of the "Black Warrior" going 
at his best gait. To add to the ludicrous, there was the fur- 
ther natural sequence — the sporting element rallied to his call. 
Jack Reese, the heavyweight Welsh slugger, who had knocked 
out every contestant in the ring for years and still held the 
champion belt, came forward and was enrolled. This was 
heralded in the local press of Scranton, and editorially we were 
already dubbed the fighting company ; later, "bloody Com- 
pany K." Four lightweights, all of whom had fought in the 
ring, followed Reese. Coal miners came in, mostly Irish, and 
a preponderance showed in boys who were slate-pickers in the 
coal-breakers, and who must have fibbed right royally when 
they swore they were eighteen years of age. In their haste to 
join they wasted no time in washing the coal dust from their 
faces. 

Another contingent came from the lumbering region on the 
Lehigh. They w^ere great brawny, half -wild fellows, and the 
local press again dilated on the future of such a wonderful 
company. These recruits were muscular woodmen, bear 



10 



hunters in the deep wilderness, and one of them was the 
acknowledged Nimrod in all that section. When the lawyers 
from Wilkes-Barre went out each fall loaded for bear, they 
always called for John Larn. who camped with them and 
piloted them in the labyrinths of that dense forest on Buck 
Mountain. 

Before becoming one of this conglomerated company I 
passed some hours in solemn communion with myself, over 
the parting counsel of my aged instructor, Professor 'Tread- 
well, who had for years been noted in connection with Chapel 
Hill, N. C. but who had accepted a position in the North just 
before the outbreak of hostilities. He said to me with the 
gravest sincerity and kindliest intentions, "Don't go ! The 
country does not expect you to make so great a sacrifice. 
There are thousands of young men to whom a three years' 
gap in life will make no appreciable difference, but with you, 
practically all will be lost. You have but your junior and 
senior years to complete in college, when you can take your 
degree, li you enter the service all your hard-earned study 
will evaporate ; you will be too rusty to withstand an examina- 
tion if you survive ; and how inequitable it appears in your 
case after struggling for your education, going out winter 
terms to teach to earn money to re-enter school for spring and 
fall terms, and working in haying and harvesting during vaca- 
tion at $i.oo per day, and then to sacrifice it all. Let others 
go ! Besides, in my experience at Chapel Hill, N. C, where I 
prepared many young men of the South for West Point and 
Annapolis, let me assure you that entering the army will injure 
you in other respects. It will change your ideals ; you will 
look upon your military leaders with a glorified admiration 
and worship. I have watched the career of many of them 
(and he mentioned Earl Van Dorn, who was one of his 



II 

favorite pupils, along with others). In your after years, your 
degree which you can take at graduation will be a help to any 
career you may choose, while, on the contrary, a three years' 
service will yield no particular merit. Don't go, I beg. But, 
if you must go, why not join the young men with whom you 
are acquainted? They are all going into the infantry regi- 
ment ; they have an interest in common, because from the 
same locality; their woes and joys are yours by community of 
interest, and in sickness or distress you will always be wdth 
friends." 

Wrestling with such sincere counsel, I fought out the deter- 
mination, and enrolled myself among strangers. I had never 
met one of them. When the door of the large public hall, 
the rendezvous for the recruits, was opened and I was thrust 
in, and heard the click of the lock which shut me from the 
old world, I looked around at the faces (nearly a hundred), 
and my blood was almost checked with an inward terror. 
Here was the company which the local press prophesied would 
mow wide swaths in the ranks of the enemy, yet a more incon- 
gruous, motley gang, I, a country boy, had never seen. 

Rudyard Kipling in his army stories always needs a Ser- 
geant Mulvaney to enliven the interest, and every regiment has 
had its Mulvaney. \Ye had him in this group and he was the 
first to speak as I entered, pale from my student life, not yet 
fully grown, and to outward appearances, as my friends more 
than once warned me, rapidly approaching consumption. My 
dress, too, was student-like and all out of keeping in that mass 
of heterogeneous humanity. Biglin, a witty Irishman, the 
Mulvaney of the crowd, caught sight of me and bawled, 
"Phawats that?" and in the next breath, "Holy Moses, he wud 
be a sojer." 

Digressing for a moment, once more, to those glorious days 



12 



in the Shenandoah, Captain Bean used to bring the gossip of 
division and corps headquarters, ahvays interesting, of course. 
One cool night around a big blaze of logs, General Sheridan, 
his staff, and a few visitors from the various commands were 
discussing the ideal cavalry regiment, and Captain Bean gave 
us the substance of what General Sheridan offered that night. 
He said his ideal cavalry regiment would consist of young 
fellows from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, none to 
weight over 130 pounds, and not one in the wdiole number to 
be married. 

Applying this test to the strange bunch of recruits in the 
hall, Sheridan was right, and the slate-pickers and myself 
were to be saved as survivors in the grand test, and so it 
proved. 

In those rainy days and blizzards of the winter of 1862-63, 
in the shifting camps we occupied on the low damp soil in the 
vicinity of Acquia Creek where whiskey and quinine were 
served to save the dwindling ranks, our massive Welsh prize- 
fighter became a wreck and died before the flowers bloomed in 
the spring. The great bear hunter, six feet six inches tall, 
with his huge frame in proportion, was shrunken to a pitiable 
sight, his eyes sunken and his bones sticking hard against his 
sallow .skin, and after a stay in the hospital, was discharged 
to return home helpless for the rest of his Hfe. All the older 
married men from the Lehigh lumber camps shared the same 
fate, eventually. The four lightweight prize-fighters suc- 
cumbed later on and were in hospital more than in camp ; 
they, too, were discharged. 

But the slate-pickers, the wicked, waspy, witty, little dare- 
devils, and myself grew strong and athletic- every day. Not 
an hour of sickness for us, and during all our three years' 
service, though we had watered our horses in every stream 



13 



from the Potomac to the Blackwater, and from the North 
Mountain in Western Virginia to the sea, and had drank from 
the V same pools, muddy or swampy, not a moment of sickness 
for us, and before I had been in the service six months I 
could easily accomplish the stunt I had worked for assidu- 
ously — that of placing my hand on my horse's neck when at 
a trot, and vaulting at a bound into the saddle. As for the 
sportsman who owned the "Black Warrior," he never became 
captain; it was not intended he should; he had posed as a 
blind to gather recruits because of his local popularity. The 
commission was given to his friend with whom an under- 
standing had existed from the beginning. 

The; Initiative. 

The supreme problem, however, in the making of the volun- 
teer cavalryman was the development of the initiative. The 
opportunities for some of us came early. It seems, or rather, 
such was the rumor, that General Wade Hampton had issued 
an order granting privilege of transfer from infantry to his 
cavalry to any who could furnish the horse and equipment. 
This heightened activity along the upper Rappahannock, and 
annoyed us incessantly. Crossings at every ford were fre- 
quently made to secure equipment from the Yankees. An 
outpost camp was established a few miles above the main army 
commanded by Colonel Cesnola, who had seen service in 
Italy. A squadron from each of the Sixth and Ninth New 
York Cavalry Regiments re-en forced Colonel Cesnola's own 
regiment, the Fourth. Each day twelve men from our regi- 
ment reported to this camp for duty, I being of the number, 
and it so happened that I was continued on the permanent 
detail. The first day out (there were twenty of us) we were 
ambushed near Rllis Ford. As we entered a stretch of woods 



14 



riding on a narrow road cut down on the side hill, not expect- 
ing to meet difficulty so near our own camp and even without 
an advanced guard, a pistol shot rang out which was the 
signal, and then a volley from fifteen muskets (we afterward 
learned the exact number) accompanied with their yell, "Halt, 
halt, surrender you sons of blank." These shots came from 
the detachment of Hampton's command, a trifle short of 
twenty feet distant (as we afterward measured it). They 
being on higher ground, concealed in the thicket of low pines, 
and having a dead rest for aim. it is a mystery why most of 
us were not murdered. But as two balls pierced Fagin, the 
scout, who rode at the head of the column in citizen's clothes, 
and one had struck his horse, it is to be assumed that more 
than that number were aimed especially at him. Four other 
horses were struck and two men wounded. That accounts 
for nine shots of the fifteen. As no trace of a pistol shot was 
found it must be assumed that the lieutenant in charge carried 
a single or double barreled pocket affair. Sergeant Hines, of 
our regiment, who rode at my right, and who was farther from 
the fire, had his hand shattered. I felt only the hot blast on 
my left cheek, but it was hot enough, as specks of the burning 
cartridge ploughed through the skin, making it uncomfortably 
sore. For a second I was absolutely dazed. The suddenness 
of the attack and the yells completely stunned me. Initiative 
in me? Not a bit of it; but in the fraction of a second, look- 
ing ahead, as if intuitively appealing for help from our leader. 
I saw the men of the Xinth New York flashing fire from their 
carbines into the faces of our assailants. Automatically, the 
rest of us followed suit. Our regiment had not yet received 
their carbines so we used our pistols. On these cold days 
we had a habit of carrying our revolvers thrust in oiu- breasts, 
hanging on the buttons of our overcoats, our fingers being too 



15 



numbed to pull them quickly from the holsters, so, instinct- 
ively, with no reasoning, or initiative on my part I did as they 
did, and began firing and soon emptied every chamber. If 
they in the lead had run, I, too, would have been of the "also 
ran." Our fire was so galling and at such close range, that 
the enemy instead of re-loading at once, slunk back into the 
scrub pines almost crawling on the bellies to escape the blast. 
Counting our carbine and pistol shots, we sent nearly three 
times as many at them as we received, yet the fatalities as 
afterward learned, were but two wounded, but they had a 
steady aim at rest on us, and could each see his man, while we 
were aiming in the direction of their smoke. Our horses were 
unsteady, too, and we were aiming up the side hill where they 
were concealed. 

But in the anah-sis of the situation, as I philosophize in my 
maturer years on this, my first baptism of fire, these incidental 
details become obscured and I am led to conclude that the 
swift contagion of those brave Ninth New York men gave us 
(we, the green ones, I mean) our first cue, and to this day I 
wonder at the quickness and initiative. I could not have 
believed it possible to jerk out a carbine hanging at its rest 
and get to firing so soon. The only thing I can compare is 
the action of the fingers of the expert piano player. The hand 
thinks quicker than the brain. Before we were mustered out 
in 1865 at the close of the war we had occasion more than 
once to appreciate this automatic initiative. 

You have heard the story of the family seated around the 
dining table in February feeding sugar to the last fly of his 
race, and the question which adorned the tale: "Who ever 
heard of feeding sugar to a fly in August?" After the close 
of our ambush episode, Sergeant Hines, back in the camp, 
bleeding and in pain was given the sole occupancy of ]\Iajor 



16 



Durland's wall tent until an ambulance could arrive next day, 
for he was the first one to shed blood in our regiment, and 
Major Durland actually mixed milk punches for him. Think 
of such a scene in 1864! Major Durland sent for me to 
rehearse all the minor details of the event, and examining the 
burnt blister on my cheek, gave me a milk punch for getting 
"nearly killed." In the long campaigns thereafter when we 
were adding glory to the honor of American cavalry, I never 
had a milk punch tendered me for getting nearly killed. I 
was the fly in August. 

The next day I made my first blunder, and all for the lack 
of that initiative which we in after service earned so well. It 
is said a lawyer is more successful in the long run if he loses 
his first case, and ornamented mottoes are now sold with 
President Roosevelt's saying, "The man who never makes 
mistakes is the man who never does anything." 

That ambuscade of the day previous had aroused Colonel 
Cesnola, and a reconnaissance in force was sent out to pass 
up the river along all the fords as far as Kelley's in charge 
of an officer who had seen service in both the British and 
Austrian armies, wearing three medals on his breast and so 
well known in the First Cavalry Division as Captain Tim 
Hanley, afterward Colonel Hanley of the Ninth New York 
Cavalry. He had his own squadron, a company from each of 
the Fourth and Sixth New York Cavalry Regiments and the 
usual detachment from our own. We had skirmishes on the 
way up, and at the last halt, small patrols were sent out in 
various directions to gather information at the farm houses. 
I was placed as a lookout up the road, the reserve being not 
far back under cover of a sharp turn in the road. Soon, right 
ahead of me two mounted men emerged from the woods as if 
going toward their home, the enemy's side of the river. They 



17 



were mounted on spirited horses with better than ordinary 
equipment, and in personal deportment were of distinguished 
bearing, their beards trimmed neatly, Vandyke, all of which 
indicated that they were of some importance. Looking down 
the road they saw me. I could not tell who they might be, 
for the day was drizzling and they were covered to their 
boots with their ponchos, as was I, and their caps were con- 
cealed under their oil cloths. Of course, I challenged imme- 
ditely, "Halt, who comes there?" They gave no answer, but 
looked at each other as if exchanging a few words, then each 
reached under his poncho and drew a revolver. I saw the 
glitter of the silver mountings and was further convinced that 
they must be officers of rank, so, aiming with my revolver I 
fired. My horse shied at the report, and my aim for the 
succeeding shots was uncertain, they in the meantime galloping 
toward me. I had emptied all my chambers, when right be- 
hind me at full charge came a number of the Ninth New 
York from the reserve who had heard my challenge and the 
first shot. The two strangers suddenly wheeled their horses 
back into the woods and the race began in earnest, I joining in. 
Down some distance one of them lost the blanket from under 
the saddle, which shows how furiously he must have urged 
his horse, and the quality of the blanket further attested the 
theory that they were men of superior grade. The pursuit was 
given up after a long chase, for they knew the woods, and on 
the return I was the victim. They upbraided me for my 
"greenness" in the business, and kept it up until we reached 
the reserve when the whole affair was renewed in the hearing 
of Captain Hanley and a fresh flow of anathemas flung against 
me because I did not run into the reserve at once after the 
challenge, and thus coax them further along, for, as they 
expressed it, if they had approached three or four rods nearer, 



they would surely have been captured. Captain Hanley, with 
his big. generous Irish heart, checked them and told them if 
every one of them would stand, with his face to the enemy 
until his last shot was fired, no complaint would be heard. 
But I blundered all the same, and Captain Hanley as well as 
I knew it, all for the want of that initiative which individual- 
ized the typical cavalryman of the later days. 

These reconnoitering and scouting expeditions were kept up 
for about forty days and during that time, we of the perma- 
nent detail had been under fire eighteen times, while as yet, 
our regiment and its officers had not smelled smoke. Then, 
the Cesnola outpost was abolished, and under the new order 
the scouting business was placed on a new basis, being there- 
after directed from corps headquarters. 

But new opportunities for the development of the initiative 
arose, and in which all regiments of cavalry, operating on the 
Rappahannock had a part, that of guarding against these petty 
squads from the enemy attempting to get horses by snatching 
away a lonely picket or attacking a reserve post. Out on the 
White Ridge road T was sent eight milees from the lines in 
charge of twelve men, having in the meantime become a duty 
sergeant. The colonel, when sending me said, "I expect you 
to bring back every man and every horse." Our stay was ten 
days at a time, strictly outpost, not connected with similar de- 
tachments by a picket line, but in contact with them by patrols 
during the night, right and left, at agreed upon hours, and 
agreed upon points for meeting. These agreements were 
made afresh each day in advance of the night, for if the patrols 
were regular, as to routes and hours, the prowlers who were 
always alert would know when and where to strike. During 
those ten days, in which occurred one of the worst blizzards I 
saw in \'irginia, T went each two hours every night with the 



19 



fresh relief, and placed each picket each time in a changed 
position, and allowed no talking going or coming, yet in spite 
of all this precaution we were attacked twice in the ten days; 
but I obeyed the colonel's order, and brought back every man 
and every horse. In looking back at that eventful period, 
only six months after my enrollment, and not yet twenty-one 
years of age, I can offset the statement of the professor's that 
"minute-men" could be massed at a call, but cavalry, no! 
This outpost duty developed the initiative in us and the little 
Irish slate-pickers I had with me from choice, proved their 
blood and mettle. 

But the consideration of the initiative on the larger scale 
was awaiting us. The cavalry corps had been effectively 
organized, and who can forget that magnificent sight when 
President Lincoln reviewed us on the plains of Falmouth in the 
spring of 1863. If my memory serves me aright there were 
twenty-five regiments in that display, though many had dwin- 
dled to below the quota. Then, again it looked like preparing 
for the initiative when grindstones were issued to the regiments 
and orders given to sharpen the sabres eighteen inches from 
the point. 

Now followed the spring campaign, the crossing of the 
Rappahannock with Hooker to Chancellorsville. General 
Stoneman took nearly all the cavalry with him on his expedi- 
tion, and, as gossip ran, did not want General Alfred Pleasanton ; 
and Hooker, knowing the personal feeling, said, "Alf, you 
stay with me." So the story went, at any rate, and it was 
well for Pleasanton that he stayed, for the Saturday night 
panic of the Eleventh Corps is what made him. He had but 
three regiments, ours being one, to dash down Hazel Run, 
where more credit is due the cavalry than is given by Colonel 
Hamlin in his book defending the Eleventh Corps. 



20 



The need of a thorough cavalryman was well shown here, 
when our West Point colonel, who had been well cursed for 
his severe discipline, proved the worth of regular army training 
in handling the regiment at that critical time. A staff officer 
of some European experience said that night, such a scene 
was never before seen on the American continent, and would 
never be again. Hooker's pack mules carrying ammunition, 
beef cattle, retreating caissons and even batteries, were con- 
fusedly intermingled with panic-stricken men, many with hats 
lost and muskets thrown away, all flying toward the Chan- 
cellor House. 

It would have been easy for that swift contagion of fear to 
have seized our regiment, the most of the men and officers 
never having been under fire, but the young trained colonel 
knew his business ; he allowed them no time to think of any- 
thing but strict attention to his sharp and quickly-delivered 
commands as they rang out in that din, and under a galling 
fire. He wheeled us by squadron, first to the right, next to 
the left, advancing then by regimental front; again he wheeled 
us as before but to the left, advancing once more with the 
entire front, and these swift evolutions so occupied the minds 
of the men that they had no time to think of aught else. His 
quick eye saw everything. Directly athwart us, a battery flying 
in retreat at a gallop came to a sudden halt because of a ditch. 
An officer yelled, "Spike the guns." Our colonel, while still 
snapping out his quick commands, interjected another to me, 
"Sergeant, go and stop them from spiking those guns." I 
was then in charge of a pioneer corps of two men from each 
of our twelve companies, and my twenty-four men were 
equipped mostly with axes ; two had picks and two shovels. 
As the pioneer corps rode always at the head of the column 
directly behind the colonel, I was the nearest to him just at 



21 



that moment. Dashing toward the discomfitted artillerymen, 
I yelled in advance, "Don't spike those guns; we will get you 
over the ditch." The answ^er I got was, "Who the hell are 
you?" Here was a state of things. Technically, that battery 
was under its own command, and I, an interloper, yet I was 
under orders from the ranking officer on that part of tlie field. 
Some abominable epithets were hurled as they snarled at us 
to get out and attend to our business, and for a moment, a 
disgraceful scene followed, coming to blows, finally with some 
of the men. Dismounting my men, picks and shovels were 
soon tearing down the banks of that ditch, and the men, with 
axes, chopped every sapling in the vicinity, flinging in branches, 
trunks, old stumps and debris, until we got the pieces safely 
over. It is singular why the officer in charge of the battery 
did not see that a strong cavalry regiment right there would 
have to be whipped before they could get his guns, and in 
another direction he could have seen Martin's Sixth New 
York Independent Battery coming down at a gallop from the 
direction of the Chancellor House, but in a panic, one does 
not know what may not happen next. As a matter of di- 
gression I had never thought it possible for a battery of six 
guns to fire with such rapidity as did Martin's when they were 
throwing canister at short range into Jackson's men. 

In the forenoon of that Saturday, returning from a recon- 
naissance out on the plank road, our colonel ordered a halt 
in the woods and directed me with my pioneers to build an 
abattis across the road, and fell trees on either side from 
some distance. John Esten Cooke in his charming story, 
"Eagle's Nest," mentions this obstruction with its sharpened 
poles sticking out toward a possible advance, and it was behind 
this abattis that the North Carolinians were crouched that 
night when they fired into Stonewall Jackson and his escort 
coming toward them on the plank road. 



22 



During that night an order came from General Pleasanton 
to Colonel Kellogg to send out a detail to effect junction with 
General Sickles somewhere down deep in the wilderness. As 
I was directly near the colonel with the pioneers, he ordered 
me to go. I took ten men, deployed them far apart but within 
calling distance and penetrated the thick undergrowth and 
darkness. Twice, when challenged, we were fired into, when 
I turned almost at right angle. Soon another challenged, and, 
"Who are you?" When I answered Seventeenth Pennsyl- 
vania Cavalry a cheerful voice replied, "You're the ones we're 
looking for ; get us out of this where we can connect with our 
lives." Thus, I claim the honor of pulling the first column 
of the Third Corps out into the open. 

In the further making of the volunteer cavalryman, our 
colonel, fresh from the Regular Army, vigorously resorted to 
the weeding-out of many of our officers who were totally unfit 
for their chosen calling. He simply compelled them to resign, 
and they returned to their homes short in funds, for they had 
purchased gorgeous uniforms, fine feathers for, their hats and 
elaborately decorated sabres and pistols. The stuff for cav- 
alrymen was not in them, and on this line of thought, as we 
recall subsequent service, the psychological problem presents 
itself: Why is it that one regiment excels another? Why 
does one squadron, or company, even in a regiment, surpass in 
efficiency, all the others? It would seem that men raised in a 
common environment with similar education and advantages 
ought to be alike when put under the same training; they are 
all made of one stuff, same calcium in the bones, same nitrogen 
in the tissues, same iron in the blood, same cell structure in 
the l)rain. yet the facts show that certain regiments of certain 
squadrons, yes, even certain companies are classed as the best. 
What can it be but that swift contagion of inspiration? The 



23 



making of the men is all in the officers. There is a something 
which permeates, as does the psychic force of a man trans- 
mitted to the horse he rides. Fear begets fear ; confidence 
begets confidence. The lack of initiative in small matters 
betrays itself and the men feel it. A volume of some propor- 
tions might be filled with such incidents, but one of a kind 
will, do for illustration. 

In that hot fight at Smithfield in the Shenandoah Valley, we 
had driven the enemy's cavalry in on to their infantry, when 
they, in turn forced us back. Pushed through the small vil- 
lage we found ourselves in that well regulated farming section 
where the fields of small size are set off by substantial stone 
walls. These proved a hindrance in falling back, especially 
for the artillery, and much so to us, the cavalry. Gaps had 
to be torn to let us out. The hard pressure of the advancing 
infantry gave us all we wanted to attend to. 

Earlier in the engagement, the commanding officer of our 
regiment for that day (the adjutant), directed me to detail 
a squadron to go down a full mile to watch on the left flank. 
I had afterward been kept busy (as we were continually fall- 
ing back) riding from one end of our line to the other, and 
seeing that we had receded so far, I made bold to inform the 
officer in command that the two companies of the Fourth 
Squadron were left in an exposed situation. With a look of 
visible agitation he said, "Blazes, go and get them out, I had 
forgottten them." If our West Point colonel had been there 
he W'Ould not have forgotten — he never forgot anything. 

Dashing down that long mile, taking the fire of the enemy 
all the way, I was met some distance from his command by 
the captain of the squadron, wdio was impatient, scolding be- 
cause he was forgotten, who yelled, "What are the orders?" 
I answered at that distance, "Get back," and with his 200 



24 



pounds and over weight, on a heavy horse, he began loping 
like an elephant toward his line, but I flew past him, and 
catching sight of one of my former slate-pickers, who had 
now become a sergeant, I yelled, "Take four men to the stone 
wall and tear a hole wide enough for a column of fours." No 
slate was ever thrown from a coal breaker as were those stones 
from that wall. The captain pulled his squadron through, 
I staying with the skirmish line as rear guard covering him, 
the enemy's infantry curling around us like a rope. Two more 
walls were broken to let us out in safety, when Biglin, the 
Mulvaney above mentioned, broke the silence, "Glory be, adju- 
tant, but you got us out of that cursed hole foinely." Here 
was my chance to get back at him, and I answered, "Biglin, do 
you remember the day I entered Washington Hall? Well, I 
notice that when I was riding down to save you exposed to 
that fire, you didn't bawl out, Thwat's that?'" 

But there's no use in trying to get ahead of an Irishman. 
With his wit and blarney, he came back at me: "Oh! Adju- 
tant, when yez came into the hall that day, the first time I 
ever saw yez, ye was that handsome and ilegant young gentle- 
man, that I had to say 'Phwat's that.' " 

I cite this case of the captain as one of many where the 
initiative was lacking. HI had not arrived he would have 
waited for orders until he was driven by the enemy to that 
stone wall which must have occurred in a few seconds more, 
and seconds count on a fighting field. His horses could not 
have jumped the wall. I had a better mount than any in that 
squadron yet I could not have hurdled it even with my light 
weight riding up hill. The result would have been that his 
men in desperation would have abandoned their horses and 
scaled the wall to escape capture. By that time they would 
have been exposed to a fire from three sides for they were in 



25 



a loop. Wh)^ the captain did not have a hole in that wall ready 
for escape, seeing his danger is one of the strange things which 
happen. 

Time will not allow a further relation of events to enforce a 
consideration of the initiative, but in closing I beg for a mo- 
ment to answer the gracious and genial old professor who 
warned me that I would suffer in after life if I lost my gradua- 
tion and degree at college. If I had it to do over again I would 
prefer the three years schooling in the cavalry service to the 
two remaining years in college with its classical and philo- 
sophical training. 

And a further consolation comes to me when I tell my 
children, that before serving one full year, running the gamut 
of all promotions up to first sergeant, I was sufficiently made 
into a cavalryman as to be chosen, at twenty-one years of age, 
by a West Point colonel adjutant of a regiment, which in the 
words of Major General Thomas C. Devin, under whom it had 
served from the foundation of the cavalry corps to Appo- 
mattox, "was as good a cavalry regiment as ever entered the 
service." 

A comrade of the regiment who enlisted at sixteen years of 
age, who never rose higher than a non-commissioned officer 
and who never missed a roll call in three years, now a pros- 
perous banker in ceiitral Pennsylvania, said to me when on a 
recent visit to Washington, "Do you know that I am almost 
ashamed when my neighbors ask me how many engagements I 
went through ; I fear they will not believe me, but I have the 
record and they number loi without the skirmishes." 

I answered that I, too, was reluctant to talk about them, 
but I counted differently. I number the engagements fifty- 
six and the skirmishes over eighty that I went through, and 
in enumerating the latter I do not count sniping and pot 



26 



shooting. I call it an engagement when a good battle line 
was formed and fought on, and where artillery was used. 
Many of these, to be sure, where only our brigade participated. 
What I call a skirmish is where a determined and well defined 
line was shooting to kill, an equally deployed and persistent 
line, though the reserves were not wholly called into action. 
"But, whatever the number, soldiers who know the history of 
the First Division of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the 
Potomac, and the Shenandoah will not be staggered when they 
hear such an estimate. 

At a Grand Army encampment, a group of newspaper men 
were discussing the interesting columns of the PhiladcJpJiia 
Inquirer, which was reprinting the war news just as it was 
published in war time from day to day, and one said to me, 
"You cavalry had a great many skirmishes, I see ; but in the 
heavier engagements, Kilpatrick did most of the fighting, 
didn't he?" I simply answered, "My friend. General Kil- 
patrick. who commanded the Third Division of the Cavalry 
Corps, did good service, and no one, I hope, would wish to 
lessen it in the least, but the First Division, under General 
Buford, and the Second under Gregg, also are entitled to a 
share of honor in cavalr}- achievements, and the reason why 
you do not see longer articles touching them is because you 
are not acquainted with a bit of unwritten history which may 
explain." 

General Buford, who, many of us claim, was the best cavalr}' 
officer ever produced on this continent, enforced a rule that 
no newspaper correspondent should be quartered with the 
staff of his division. General Wesley Merritt, who succeeded 
him after the lamented death in December, 1863, adliered to 
the same rule. It could hardly be expecteed that long de- 
scriptions of cavalry engagements with big "scare lines" for 



27 



headings could appear under such an existing state of things. 

This modest, dignified bearing was ever a characteristic 
feature of the First Cavah-y Division and it had its salutary 
effect in the making of the volunteer cavalryman, and herein 
is where I wish to again answer the kindly old professor, who 
warned me that army life would have a tendency to change 
my ideals. It did change my ideals. My preconceived notions 
(boyish, of course, I admit) that a typical cavalryman was a 
swashbuckler, who rode terrifically with his sabre gripped by 
his teeth, a revolver in each hand and his breath almost aflame 
as it spurted from his nostrils, all disappeared, and in lieu 
thereof we saw the grand, immortal Buford, a veritable like- 
ness of a gracious judge of the Eighteenth Century, his be- 
nign face always in a smile, his white necktie cut evenly square 
as the two wide laps hung down on his high-buttoned coat, 
placid as a courtier, charming as a picture of the old school 
of gentlemen, and as affectionate and magnetic as a confiding 
child, and in all this was really and truly the terrific cavalryman 
of our war history. 

General Merritt, too, had that genial, though rather more 
reticent demeanor, and left his impress on us, the young volun- 
teer cavalrymen in the making. Then, too, we had always 
with us the Reserve Brigade, the Regulars. They exerted an 
improving influence on us. Speaking generally, the officers 
were of a superior order of men in chivalrous deportment; 
they knew more than did we, and we had strong common 
sense enough to know it. Space will not allow the justice due 
them in this paper, but take one, a type, Rodcnbough, Captain 
Rodenbough as we first knew him. General Rodenbough after- 
ward. His case will carve the points for the others. What 
a superb, magnificent specimen of manhood — a right down 
royally good cavalryman, yet as graceful and accomplished, 



28 



always as if bound by the social conventions of a drawing 
room, and as genial in greeting on all times and occasions 
as if a comrade with his playfellows. How we provincial 
youngsters from the country aped those cosmopolitan, well- 
bred men. Was there anything of supercilious affectation in 
all this? It was the making of us in our deportment in after 
life. It was the tenacious clinging to our newly-found ideals, 
for they had veritably changed. 



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